‘On the Basis of Sex’ Film Review: RBG Biopic Celebrates the Political and the Personal

Felicity Jones captures Ruth Bader Ginsburg's steely gaze in a film that appreciates her family as well as her brilliant legal career

Yolanda Machado, provided by

Published
8:45 am CST, Friday, December 21, 2018

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

‘On the Basis of Sex’ Film Review: RBG Biopic Celebrates the Political and the Personal

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

How do you make a biopic about one of the greatest living legal and political legends of our lifetime? For one, you don’t. It’s far too great a task to summarize in just two hours the work of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the impact she has had on an entire country and on generations of women.

Instead, director Mimi Leder’s “On the Basis of Sex” is an imperfect — at times too formulaic, but still engaging — love letter to women everywhere by giving them a peek at not the Ginsburg the Supreme Court justice, but Ruth the woman, the mother and the pioneer.